The only thing that stops the dust is the rain. It’s a sweet reprieve, but there is no middle ground. The land is either as dry as the Betty Ford clinic, or as wet as the ocean floor. Everything can be seen from the ridge overlooking Armadillo as John Marston gently bounces along atop...

Anyone play this game? I've recently discovered it and been obsessed with it for the past week. learning curve is really steep (orbital velocities, periapsis, apoapsis? Wha?), but once you get a hang of the game it is pretty fun building your own spaceships. There are a ton of mods out there to customize the gameplay to your liking as well.

Here are a couple of screenshots of my first super cereal mission in this game (me setting up the first satellite that will be part of my comm relay network) to get anyone who doesn't know about the game interested.

Once I get the relay network set up, its time to map and explore the many different bodies of the Kerbol system.

This was the first time I even seen an eclipse on Kerbin. Too bad I missed it because of the launch.

Taken about 2.8Mm away from Kerbin (synchronous orbit for the satellite).

Waiting so I can aerobreak in the atmosphere.

I fucked up a bit and accidentally deployed the emergency chute. Cut it and recovered the plane about 5km above sea level.

Flying back to Kerbal Space Command for a landing (was flying weird cause of all the extra drag now that my nose cone is gone).

An embarrassing amount of time went into the development of that shuttle btw. It isn't capable of launching into orbit from the runway, but it can fly to just about anywhere on the planet from the runway. It should be able to go into orbit if it lands on most other planets/moons, though. Thinking about just using this one for cargo and make a smaller, faster reconnaissance plane for planetary exploration.

For shits and giggles here is a development version that I scrapped (on the runway it only managed to take off a second before it ran into the ocean)

EDIT: Oh yeah, you can find a demo on their main website here. You can pay for the game to always get the latest version (they update the demo occasionally, though). You can always pirate the game, which is what I did initially. However, I had so much fun in this game that I had to pay the developers the $23 they were asking for.

Last edited by FrozenBacon on Sun Mar 17, 2013 7:23 pm; edited 1 time in total

Wait, you mean you actually managed to fly that monstrosity?
Wow, dude. I almost constantly fail space planes. I did manage to get a couple of modified standard planes up, but all the ones i build myself inevitably end in failure.

After you've gotten used to vanilla KSP for a while, you should install MechJeb. It's a great help in a lot of situations.

Also, just as a final protip: If you go to Eve (the purple planet closest to kerbin), multiply the amount of fuel you think you'll need by a factor of 3._________________http://i.imgur.com/uXwrTYA.jpg
Savage

Wait, you mean you actually managed to fly that monstrosity?
Wow, dude. I almost constantly fail space planes. I did manage to get a couple of modified standard planes up, but all the ones i build myself inevitably end in failure.

After you've gotten used to vanilla KSP for a while, you should install MechJeb. It's a great help in a lot of situations.

Also, just as a final protip: If you go to Eve (the purple planet closest to kerbin), multiply the amount of fuel you think you'll need by a factor of 3.

You talking about the second plane? Yea, that thing flew like a flying walrus. It was terrible for stable flight (SAS always oscillated the plane between 1k-500m and with manual control you had to constantly fight it just to keep it going in one direction). As you can see in the screenshot I had to turn on RCS just to make it climb.

But yea, for planes I found that as long as you have a tail and your center of lift slightly behind your center of mass, you will be able to fly fine. If the mass is too far back and you will flip on take off. Too far forward, you will never get off the ground. If you veer to the left or the right on the runway and have a perfectly symmetrical plane, either you need struts to keep the wings from flapping or more wheels to better support the weight of the plane. Took me forever to figure out the wheel part.

As for mechjeb, I have been using it for about a day. I do like how it gets you those perfect orbits, but I don't trust the ascent or landing autopilot. In the time I have been using it I've notice I have just been using the orbital information and Smart A.S.S. functions. The surf function works perfectly for planes.

You should do it longo, 18.4 is awesome. You can put a satellite into orbit around another planet, launched from a space plane that itself stays in orbit around kerbing until you send a refuelling craft to fuel it up to get it to your space station orbiting another planet._________________http://i.imgur.com/uXwrTYA.jpg
Savage

Newest version came out. They updated the runway and launchpad with ramps (actually a big deal for me since I like to park and taxi craft). There is also a heat reentry effect and better air sounds. New parts and rovers too.

Now I can finally build my airport with vehicles capable of refueling parked aircraft.

The entry re-heat on .19 is going to ruin a LOT of designs. But, it also makes the game more challenging and thus more fun.
I won't update for a while (sorting my mods out and making sure they'll all compat.), so you'll have to post up some screenshots of the new effects and one of your craft burning up. Also, is the atmo heat toggleable?_________________http://i.imgur.com/uXwrTYA.jpg
Savage

I don't think the reentry effects do anything other than make things look pretty.

The new wheels are also crap. I've been trying to build a refueling rover to use on kerbin and the wheels break on the smallest of bumps. Landing gear + rockets still seem like the best way to build a ground vehicle for kerbin. I haven't actually explored any other planets yet so I don't know how well it works in lower gravity, though.

Also it appears that remotetech s bugged with this update. If you put a remotetech part on your ship you will not be able to access the escape menu. Checked the forums and the creator said he is working on an update.

Nice, you probably could go a lot faster if you went higher with that plane. Your plane seems to be getting plenty of intake air.

Also, I left this thing running overnight and I woke up to two perfect maps of kerbin. Feels good, man.

Generating these maps gave me an idea. I think I'm going to play the game on "hardcore" mode, only using Kethane fuel. Maybe I put a few big orange fuel tanks so I can have a limited supply of the old fuel to get the kethane operation started. I'm also going to limit the vehicles i can use. If I destroy one of my planes on a mission, then I'm down one plane. Same goes for people. I'll create everything with empty cockpits and have to rotate out the existing kerbals I have.

Should be fun getting the kethane and transporting it back to KSP to fuel my parked planes. I cant wait till squad implements actual resources in this game. I will probably to busy jizzing over all the new stuff I can do to play the game.

After three days, I finally got a rover on the Mun. The fuel you have to use just to get everything into orbit is absurd compare to the amount of fuel you use to actually get to the Mun. The rover unfortunately lost the front right wheel because of how I design the part that supposed to get it off the lander. When I ejected the part, it flipped out and exploded next to the rover then that made the rover flew 20 meters up into the air. Then it landed hard on the wheel. Luckily, everything else still works, I just have to be extra careful of maneuvers now.

That's why you don't design 4 wheeled rovers. 6 or 8 wheels are much better, because if you lose 1 operational efficiency goes down but you can still do pretty much everything.

So far i haven't rovered to the moon. All my designs have been earth based, from a little one like yours all the way up to an 8-wheeled monstrosity using those huge wheels, big and strong enough that it can launch small manned craft. So you can drive it half way across the world to get a different orbit set up. If i could figure out a way to get it to another planet it would make the perfect base - can theoretically house more than 50 kerbals and i could slap a ton of docking ports on it._________________http://i.imgur.com/uXwrTYA.jpg
Savage

Thanks, Daniel. Wished I could show you guys my many, many, many epic failures when trying to land that thing.

So I was browsing through YouTube the other day and a Let's Play(er) gave me an idea for a project for us to work together on: an international space station! So I sent a somewhat basic uninhabited space station up in orbit and uploaded a save file to mediafire.

If you guys are up to it, download the save folder and add more modules to the space station (or put kerbals in it) then upload the save folder.